


The War is Won (Surrender, Love)

by Ceris_Malfoy



Series: Season Three Alternates [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Always-a-girl!Stiles, Deucalion puts a stop to that crazy shit though, Deucalion's a sneaky shit, F/M, FUCK, Killer!Stiles, Morally Ambiguous!Stiles, Peter used to be crazy, Should just say BAMF!Stiles, Stiles Feels, Stiles doesn't like that, at all, but he's mostly all better now, dark!stiles, mentioned attempted time travel, no one uses their words, oblivious!Peter, strained pack bonds, which may cause some issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-30
Updated: 2013-08-30
Packaged: 2017-12-25 02:04:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/947317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ceris_Malfoy/pseuds/Ceris_Malfoy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is in the dark of the night, when her brain won’t shut off and she is pacing, relentless with the need to do something, that she realizes that saying no was probably a very, very good thing. She is dangerous enough without adding ‘werewolf’ into that category.</p><p>It doesn’t stop her from thinking about it though, nor from dreaming.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The War is Won (Surrender, Love)

**Author's Note:**

> I don't even freaking know. Okay? I started writing an epic-length (for me) time travel AU in which Stiles deliberately travels back in time in order to get herself an Alpha!Peter, but then Deucalion happened, and I _don't even know_. Funnily enough, this is the second time a time-travel AU has done this to me. 
> 
> I think my subconscious is trying to tell me something.
> 
> Title comes from Fall Out Boy's song "The Phoenix."

1.

It starts, as most things do, with a simple question. “What if…?” Two little words, so perfectly harmless on their own, completely unable to do any sort of damage, even when combined together. Unless, of course, one considers psychological trauma, brain-breakage, and the occasional awkward moments shared by friends-who-are-really-not when such words come into play as damage. Stiles didn’t. Couldn’t, really, because if she did, well. Life was already sad and depressing enough without adding in the fact that her only real friend nowadays was her laptop, because at least it never abandoned her to die and then got pissy when she got upset because, hello? Her _life_. Seriously.

So there she was, completely minding her own business, barely listening in to the Pack’s general chatter as she manipulated the web like a goddamn _ninja_ (because, seriously, after nearly four and a half years, the only reason she hasn’t yet broken into the Pentagon’s top-secret security feeds is because A) there’s no point in doing something that illegal until there’s a situation that calls for it – she’s not Danny, after all, and it’s stupid behavior like that that got him an arrest record before he’d finished puberty – and b) the Pentagon doesn’t have anything that she actually _wants_ ) when she hears it.

“What if you had bitten Stiles instead?”

She doesn’t hear Peter’s sarcastic response, doesn’t have to, because the wave of mocking laughter that follows is more than enough to know that, yet again, she’s become the butt of yet another joke. It should bother her, and sometimes still does, but mostly all Stiles feels any more is a dim sort of unhappy confusion, as if something inside of her, something that used to burn wild and free, had faded into its own sad joke and didn’t understand how things came to be that way.

But, more to the point, she doesn’t hear the response he makes because of the _question_. It burns through her, narrowing her conscious thought to that one, singular phrase made up of six words and a name, _her_ name. ‘ _What if you had bitten Stiles instead?_ ’

What if…?

What _if_.

Her breath stutters, heart beating erratically, teeth clenching, pupils blown wide and eyes unseeing as she stares at her laptop, unable to resist the thoughts that were blooming within her head. Her fingers twitched on the keys of her laptop, as if begging, but, no. Not here. Not where any of them could see.

She closes her eyes, counting to ten to the rhythm of her heartbeat. She doesn’t so much as smother the thoughts blooming in her mind so much as promise them due consideration later in the privacy of her own home, where no one climbs in through the windows anymore, partly because they’re lined with mountain ash, mostly because no one wants to.

There’s only one werewolf that visits her nowadays, and he actually uses the front door like a proper gentleman – he even waits on the porch until she allows him inside.

Stiles shoots a quiet, quick look at the living room, because there are werewolves and if anyone had noticed her reaction it would lead to questions which would not be good, not for her, she’s barely hanging on to a place within their pack as it is. But she needn’t have worried. No one’s looking at her, no one has picked up on her still slightly accelerated heartbeat or the scent of what surely must be excitement on her skin.

She tries hard not to think about why she’s excited.

It feels too much like betrayal.

 

2.

The situation that jump-started the truly epic divide between her and Derek’s pack truly hadn’t been her _entire_ fault (not at first, though she accepts full responsibility for what developed from it), though at the time she could see how things might have been seen as such. She’d panicked when the Darach had killed Heather, because Heather was a virgin and so was Stiles, and Stiles had the sneaking suspicion that Heather had only been killed because Stiles was A) involved with the girl, and B) was too fucking paranoid to be targeted without interruption by one of the many supernatural wonders floating around this town, half of which owed her their lives, the other half who wanted her death to be at their hands only, and as such wouldn’t tolerate any competition by what was essentially a human playing at magic.

Stiles knew, however, that regardless of many things – like the fact that the statistical likeliness of her being targeted next out of all the virgins in Beacon Hills was next to nil – she was what some might call a Trouble Magnet, a Supernatural Beacon, etc. So, following that logic, it was only natural that she fucking panicked. The only way she could see getting out of imminent tri-fold sacrificing was losing her virginity as swiftly as possible.

So she did. Gave Danny a video of a half-asleep Derek wandering around his loft in nothing but a pair of boxers in return for a new fake ID – and god help her if Derek ever found out about _that_ – and told her father she was going into L.A. for the weekend to get away from all the bullshit that was going on around Beacon Hills. Instead, she went the 35 miles it took to get to the motel strip next to the only major highway that came through this part of California, where the bouncers didn’t automatically know her father was the Sheriff and the bartenders didn’t automatically kick her the hell out because she was too young. She _was_ too young, and the guy who eventually ended up serving her half a bottle of premium malt whisky over the course of the night obviously knew it, but he didn’t know her from Eve and her ID said she was 22 years, and seriously? Who gave a flying fuck?

She was there, drunk off her ass, too drunk to see straight and too scared to think rationally. So when the obviously way-too-old-for-her man came up to her and started with the Bad Touch just as she was starting to leave, she let him take her to his motel room.

Thankfully she still doesn’t remember much about that night.

What she does remember is waking up with a splitting headache, a nauseous twisting in her stomach, her body feeling like one horribly erotic bruise (and how was it that she’d never known bruises could feel so damn good?), and the crushing feeling that she’d just done something very, very stupid.

Which was correct, because when she woke up, she was staring right at a _very_ naked Deucalion.

Fuck. Her. Life.

 

3.

The idea won’t leave her alone. Possibilities and eventualities and plans and scenarios twist like a pit of mating snakes inside her head, each more outlandish and absurd then the last. She isn’t thinking rationally, isn’t doing that pragmatic thing that gets her into just as much trouble as it gets her out of, but at the moment she doesn’t care. Just goes with the flow, because she knows herself better than she knows anything else and so knows that if she doesn’t get all this out of her system now, she’ll either do something _really_ fucking stupid or she’ll have yet another goddamn mental breakdown. Which would bring her up to her sixth one, and no. Just _no_. She’s not leaving the one-hand mental breakdown count. Ever.

So she lets her thoughts slip and slide within her head as she stares at her ceiling in the dark, listening to the sound of her heart as it thuds ever more erratically within her chest. She thinks and imagines and hears, over and over, those two damning little words.

‘ _What if…?_ ’

 

4.

See the problem with her isn’t that she isn’t smart. She’s actually very, _very_ intelligent, fuck you very much. Too intelligent for her own good, is what she hears on a regular basis, and really, sometimes she wishes-hopes-dreams that one day she’ll wake up and slide right down the IQ scale to normality because this? This isn’t doing her any favors.

No one really believes in her intelligence, even though she has the testing scores to prove it. She’s nothing but an ADHD insomniac with an internet connection and no brain-to-mouth filter to most people, even those that are supposed to support and love her. _Especially_ to those who are supposed to support and love her, because she can never seem to turn off her mouth when amongst those she considers her friends and family. It’s a trust thing, but no one seems to get that, not even her dad. It’s a trust thing, and she knows it is, because the only time Stiles actively tries to listen and control what comes out of her mouth is when she’s amongst people she doesn’t know. For as much as her mouth runs away from her, it’s really surprising just how much she really _isn’t_ saying to those she doesn’t trust.

So, yeah. No one seems to get the fact that she’s intelligent; doesn’t seem to get the fact that some days her brain is already so many leaps-bounds-light-years ahead of everyone else that sometimes she forgets that no one else’s brains run at that kind of speed or are capable of making those instinctual leaps in logic that makes her one of the best problem-solvers in her little group; doesn’t seem to get that despite the fact that she has serious trouble focusing on the here and now and that she really only gets about an hour or two, at most, to complete her school work, that she’s had straight A’s since the 1st grade, even from _Harris_ , despite the raft of shit she got on a daily basis from him.  And that? That is a goddamn _Medal of Honor_ right there, because even _Lydia_ got a B- from that jerk-off. But everyone views Lydia as the genius of the group, because she thinks in sane, linear patterns that everyone can follow once she explains them in quick ‘god-you’re-so-stupid’ sentences.

Which is where the problem with Stiles comes into play, because just as Lydia isn’t the actual genius of this group, Peter isn’t the actual monster.

Stiles has got that area pretty covered, too.

 

5.

To put it simply: the sex is _amazing_.

And of course it is, because Deucalion, whatever else he may be, is an older, obviously _really_ experienced hot-as-shit member of the male species. And, evidently, he has no shame whatsoever when it comes to fucking seventeen-year-old girls in seedy motels. Which he does. With her.

It’s a thing. That they do. That she _enjoys_. Very, very much.

It isn’t that she is desperate. Because despite the emotions that drove her into that first time, she really isn’t. She is actually very, very aware of exactly what sort of assets she has, and while she might not be considered very attractive by boys her age, she is, incidentally, more than attractive to certain older men with certain predatory instincts. She looks vulnerable, she supposes, but not like prey.

So, not desperate. She has _options_ , now that she is aware of them. And the continued meetings isn’t out of any teenage puppy love or romanticized fixations, either. She is convenient for Deucalion, she assumes, but she has no idiotic dreams of love or even _like_. She is _tolerated_ during the moments they aren’t fucking, but there is nothing else to it.

Despite this lack of emotional attachment between the two of them – or perhaps because of it – she keeps finding quiet lulls in the discreet war between their packs to slip unnoticed into what has become _their_ motel room, letting him use her as he wants because _god_ does it feel _good_. All the while knowing that one drunken mistake could have been forgiven, if not condoned. All the while knowing exactly what bridges she isn’t just burning but _blowing the fuck up_ if she ever gets caught willingly walking into a motel room to be fucked by a rival Alpha.

And she does get caught, because Derek may be an asshole, but his heart is in the right place and he isn’t a _complete_ failure of an Alpha. He does occasionally worry about the only human in his pack that has no combat training whatsoever. He does occasionally come to check on her.

 

6.

“When I was sixteen,” she begins slowly, “I met an Alpha. He was what some might call borderline feral, what others would call psychotic.” She hesitates, because this? This is something she’d never told anyone, something that has never slipped from her lips even in hinting, something dark and secretive that she’s actually pretty damn sure Peter doesn’t even really remember. As he’d said before to Derek during one of their more vocal arguments, most of that night was a haze of instinct and pain.

Deucalion doesn’t prompt her to continue, content as he is to let her say what she needs to say. She likes that about him. Sometimes she wonders what it would be like, to be _truly_ his, but she knows better. Deucalion may tolerate her, may find her interesting now, but eventually he _will_ get bored with her. The thought doesn’t bother her.

“He kidnapped me one night, secreted away with me out from the noses and watchful eyes of nearly half the in-the-know adult population of Beacon Hills. I had something he needed, a way to get to his captured Betas, and he needed to ensure my … _cooperation_. The whole time I was with him, I was terrified out of my mind, afraid not for myself, but for my father. I am all he has left in this world, and the last thing I ever want is for him to find my mutilated corpse stashed within my own trunk.”

Deucalion’s eyes gleamed like freshly spilt blood. “You weren’t afraid for yourself?” he asks, voice amused and slightly disbelieving.

“No,” she says quietly, knowing he hears the truth of it when he sits up and actually begins to pay attention, instead of listening politely. It intrigues him, she knows. She is human, after all, and not suicidal. Death should thereby be something to fear, but Stiles and death have long been acquainted with each other. “The Alpha…” she pauses again, only slightly, before continuing. “He wasn’t insane, nor was he feral. He knew right from wrong, knew that what he was doing wasn’t good by anyone’s definition, but he’d been wronged, been hurt, and those who hurt him and those he’d loved were walking around happy and free. And he couldn’t deal with that, had to punish them for what they’d done, even if it meant sacrificing a few things along the way. His resolve, his determination, it freed something in him. There was no shame, no guilt. He’d said it himself – he wasn’t looking for absolution for his sins, he just wanted _understanding_. And I did understand. I understood it so well, too well.”  
  
Stiles smiles, somewhat sadly, and meets her own gaze in the mirror behind Deucalion. There is a darkness in her eyes, a sort of void that she’s never seen in anyone else’s except for Peter’s. A lack of morals, perhaps. Certainly not a lack of empathy, or emotion; she has plenty of both. “He offered me the bite, gave me all the wrong reasons for why I should take his gift to me, and I declined, despite the fact that he could tell I was lying when I said I didn’t want it, because he either never realized or never understood the one reason why I would have accepted it.”

“What reason would that be?”

She smiles and thinks of Peter as he was, glorious and free in a way that she’d never seen in a man before, never understood was possible. She had still been keeping such a tight rein on herself then, scared that she would be ousted as _different_ before she learned how to protect herself. She had drowned some integral part of her beneath years of societal norms and late night psychology research papers, learning the correct way to react to things and how to manipulate things just so that her father would never have to know exactly how broken she truly was. Peter had dug that part of her up with hardly any effort, without even _realizing_ , had woken it and excited it and set it loose and wild within her head.

Had he seen, had he known, and _still_ wanted her, there would have been no power underneath the sun that would have stopped her from saying yes. The bite would have set her free, in more ways than one, but Peter hadn’t seen, hadn’t known, and she had known even then that she wouldn’t be able to contain herself without help if she was a werewolf. Peter as he had been would have been able to direct her, control her. Now, even if he could give her the bite, she still wouldn’t take it, because the Peter of now was a completely different animal. Still sassy, still plotting something seriously fucked up, still a general pain in everyone’s ass and entirely too smart and sly for anyone’s general comfort, but he wasn’t what he had been. He wasn’t _free_.

“Stiles,” Deucalion says, prompting, curious.

She smiles, but says nothing. She climbs off the bed, slips back into her clothes, and walks out. Deucalion doesn’t follow her, doesn’t try to stop her. Some part of her is despondent over this, but the majority of her doesn’t expect any different. She isn’t worth that kind of investment, not to him, no matter how much she sometimes suspects otherwise. After all, he is hot enough that he could have anyone he wanted, and yet, here he is. With _her_. Despite that he really isn’t _who_ she truly wants, and he knows it, has _always_ known it, even that first time when she’d asked him for round two because she couldn’t remember how good round one had been.

 

7.

She’s the pragmatic one, the one who comes up with the solutions that would solve their problems with little-to-no additional trouble, the one who doesn’t look at what’s easy or what’s right but instead at what must be done and the odds involved. She believes in potential and chance, but _not_ at the expense of leaving things to develop entirely on their own. She _firmly_ believes in stocking the odds in her favor.

And they all think she’s joking when she suggests killing as a solution to their problems, even though when Derek does it, they take him seriously. She suspects it’s because Derek _looks_ like your stereotypical murderer, but she knows him better than that, knew him better than that before she even really knew him. He _is_ capable of killing, but only in extreme circumstances, and it destroys something in him every time he’s forced to do it.

She’s an old hand at death, at killing, but she knows that she doesn’t look like it. She doesn’t act like it, either. She’s had to kill to protect herself, and those she considers hers. She’s killed for vengeance and for mercy, and it’s never bothered her. She killed her own mother when her father was too sentimental to ease the woman’s pain – if it had ever truly come down to her life or the life of someone she loved, Jackson would have never stood a chance.

 

8.

She researches.

Of course she does, when doesn’t she?

But this is different, and she knows it. This… _this_ could be the answer to _everything_ , the way to get what she _truly_ wants.

Those words, those fucking words. _‘What if…?’_

What if Peter had bitten Stiles _instead_? Not _as well_ , but _instead_? The idea won’t leave her, drives her beyond the norms of her researching parameters until she’s hacking into areas of the internet she shouldn’t even know _exists_ , seeking answers, seeking some sort of absolution. She spends days at a time reading, learning, absorbing knowledge that isn’t hers and was never meant for her eyes until she crashes right there at her laptop. She guzzles down energy drinks and Adderall like they were water and pez candies and just lets her brain go. She skips school, skips pack meetings that she’s only peripherally invited to now, drops her cell phone in the toilet so that she doesn’t have to hear it ringing, and just.

Lets.

Go.

She ignores the doorbell when it rings. She ignores the howling that echoes around her house, a piercing call that speaks to her more deeply than it should. She ignores the vague, nagging suspicion that she is overlooking something very, very important.

Belief is a powerful thing, for a spark. Deaton had once told her that. And it is. Belief can topple mountains and build empires.

She’s come to find that hope is just as strong, for the desperate.

 

9.

Derek loses his shit.

She is legit scared for her life, fears for the first time in almost a year that Derek is not just going to hurt her, but actually _kill_ her. He is furious over what he’s caught her doing, so furious he can’t even seem to speak. He’s backed her up against the door to the motel room, clawed hands twitching violently.

Deucalion slips out the window, silent and smiling, the smug bastard.

She’d known that she was doing something she couldn’t be forgiven for. She had known her little affair would break what little trust Derek had for her. She’d known. And she’d been selfish and did it anyway. The part of her that wants so badly to be normal wishes she could take this all back, wishes she had trusted the pack to protect her even if the Darach _was_ going to come after her instead of dropping into bed with the first man to offer. Most of her, however, is more concerned with how to avoid getting eviscerated on the spot.

Unfortunately, she can’t seem to focus correctly, and the only thing that keeps her from being a shredded smear across the entire motel room is Derek’s control. She does her best to appear as ashamed, guilty, apologetic, and submissive as she can, playing up her half-naked state, younger age, and human fragility in order to avoid him getting the idea of _physically_ punishing her while he’s this angry. Derek’s temper is often like a pot of boiling water being removed from the stove – he boils over, then sort of simmers for a good long while before eventually cooling down. The longer she can get him to wait before releasing his anger, the better off she’ll be.

It honestly doesn’t occur to her that putting off the lecture/punishment is possibly one of the worst things she could have done in that situation, especially once he drags her back to the loft and tears into her in front of the rest of the pack. The looks on their faces once they hear what she was doing, and with whom, _should_ make her feel like absolute shit. Those looks, and the things they say to her afterwards, the things they call her, _should_ make her cry and beg for forgiveness, _should_ make her wish that she’d done things differently, _should_ make her promise never to do anything so stupid again. And they’re there, the feelings of guilt and shame, just waiting for an opportune moment to flood her senses and help her keep her pack, but by chance she catches Peter’s eyes.

His gaze isn’t condemning. He looks curious, but in a polite, distant sort of way, as if this isn’t the same man who caressed her wrist and practically tried to seduce his way into giving her the bite and told her that he “liked her.”

And the guilt and shame? Gone. It’s like someone flicked a switch insider her head. The only thing she feels after everyone has had their say and is standing around her with Derek at the lead and Peter on the edge is _rage_.

“And this,” she says quietly, swallowing down the rage, because she doesn’t want her words dismissed as those spoken in misplaced anger, though she knows that all the werewolves in the room can smell the emotion on her. She gestures vaguely at the half-circle of angry teens and one furious twenty-something-year-old-Alpha. “ _This_ is exactly why I did it.”

That throws them, she knows. And she should stop now, should turn away and _leave_ , but she’s tired and angry and _scared_ ; the combination makes her want nothing more than to rip out someone’s fucking throat. It’s times like these where she really wishes that she _is_ a werewolf or a demon or _something_ just so she could actually do some fucking damage. But she lacks things like claws or fangs, so she falls back on the one weapon she does have: her words.

“Each and every one of you dares to stand there and judge me, as if each and every one of has any _right_ to do so. You can’t judge me as Alpha, Derek,” she says, smiling prettily but with hate in her eyes and fury in the way her fingers tense and bend slightly into curves like claws. “From day _one_ you’ve made it epically clear that I’m not your pack, not your responsibility, not your friend – not _yours_. Every single person in this room has either threatened or actually _tried_ to kill me for no reason other than the fact that I am _human_ and I _exist_. Each and every one of you has at one time or another left me to take the blame for your transgressions, actively left me to die, and/or deliberately put me in positions that no sane person would put a teenage _human_. No one has ever thanked me, has ever asked me if it was all right, if _I_ was alright; you all just take and take and take and never _once_ give back. I’m not good enough. I’m not _trusted_. ”

She lifts her head, gaze hard, staring at each and every one of them, each staring back at her as if seeing her for the first time, Derek in particular looking like he’d been slapped. “I _panicked_ when the Darach killed Heather. I went to the motel strip out of town, got plastered, and fell into bed with the first man who made an overture. I was too drunk at the time to realize who I had fell into bed with, but I’m _not_ sorry it happened. Deucalion had _every_ chance to kill me, to hurt me. He had every chance to wring from me every secret I ever even thought of keeping. He had every chance to twist my mind and turn me against you all. He didn’t. Not then, and he hasn’t yet made even a token attempt.”

She smiles, and knows it is nasty and mean, baring more teeth then was strictly appropriate. “I keep seeing him because he _wants nothing from me_. He doesn’t want my secrets, doesn’t want my loyalty, and doesn’t even want your reactions. The only thing he expects from me is my pleasure at his touch. And if that’s such a bad thing, then perhaps the rest of you need to get your priorities straight, because I? I am probably going to be _dead_ before I hit twenty-one, and I’ll be _damned_ if I don’t live every moment of what life I have.”

She leaves.

No one stops her.

And that doesn’t hurt nearly as much as she once thought it would. It is, actually, strangely _lifting_.

And if she schedules a ‘date’ with Deucalion for later tonight, _well_. She’s just glad there doesn’t need to be anymore sneaking around. Trying to come up with excuses for her absences – not to mention the copious amount of showers she no longer had to take to try and remove his scent – had left her more irritable and drained that she had comprehended.

 

10.

Stiles doesn’t like Lydia. Can’t stand her really. Which she finds hilarious because everyone is so sure that Stiles _loves_ Lydia. It’s an illusion Stiles has been very, very careful to encourage and maintain, because if anyone ever found out the truth of what she _really_ wanted to do with Lydia, Stiles would be in an institution before anyone could say “fuck”. Because Stiles? Stiles doesn’t love Lydia, doesn’t want to hold her hand or kiss her, doesn’t want to run her hands through strawberry-blonde hair, doesn’t want to make her smile or wipe her tears away.

What Stiles _wants_ , more than anything, is to bash her pretty head against a concrete wall and _drag_ her still twitching corpse as she grinds the girl’s head against said wall until she’s left holding nothing more than a tuft of hair and there’s a bright line of blood and brains gleaming like fresh paint on washed-out gray. She wants to _desecrate_ Lydia Martin’s corpse, wants to carve meaty messages into the girl’s pale flesh and _watch_ as the blood oozes out. Stiles _wants_ , more than anything, to dig into Lydia’s stomach and tear and tear and tear until her lower half is connected by nothing but her spine and a few slim bits of flesh.

She wants it like she needs to breathe, has wanted it ever since her mother, her darling perfect mother who was on the mend from a long battle with cancer, was hit by a drunk driver on the way home from the store. Has wanted it ever since she had to sit in a courtroom with a social worker because her dad was too drunk to attend the trial of his wife’s murderer. Has wanted it ever since she saw the photos of her beloved mother and how she was nothing more than a smear on the concrete after the SUV doing 85mph in a 25mph zone barreled into her mother. Has wanted it ever since the drunk driver, one Alexander Martin, _strutted_ out of the courtroom with a three-month probation on his license and a fine.

Lydia might not know what Stiles _truly_ wants, might not understand the intricacies of Stiles’ rage and anger, might not fathom the depths to which Stiles is fully prepared to sink in order to make that man suffer the way she and her father had suffered, but she really doesn’t need to. Lydia _is_ smart, after all, and has perfectly good survival instincts, and Stiles knows that Lydia’s instincts _scream_ at her to _never_ be left alone with Stiles.

 

11.

It’s not that she doesn’t think about Peter’s offer often. Because she _does_. During late nights when her body is too wired to rest and her brain can’t shut off the way she needs it to in order to get at least _some_ semblance of sleep, it’s pretty much her go-to option of thinking. She likes to turn his offer over in her mind, over and over and over again, revisiting the memory repeatedly for fresh input.

She was too focused on his words, she knows that now. Her focus, when it happens, is as much a gift as it is a curse. It’s a common problem to be found in those with ADHD. Most times her brain is focusing on literally everything around her. If something moves, she notices. If there’s a sound, she hears it. She reads people like they were grade-school learners, because she can’t ignore _anything_ , ever. Her brain is simply, usually, incapable of it. It’s an amazing thing when it comes to research binges, because it makes reading from a half-dozen different sources and actually being able to cross-reference and correlate without the use of several notebooks hilariously easy.

But sometimes, something catches her attention so completely that she actually _focuses_.  She stops noticing everything else; there is just this thing which has appeared in her world and _owns_ it. Sometimes she gets so bad that she doesn't notice that she’s hungry, or thirsty, or tired for hours at a time. She’s not sure what, out of all the stimuli her brain could have chosen from that night, it was about Peter’s words that caught her attention.

Perhaps it was simply the fact that he was offering her something she very dearly wanted. Perhaps it was simply the fact that for quite possibly the first time in her entire life, someone looked at her and _wanted_.  But over the many nights she’s mentally revisited that night, she’s come to realize that though her primary focus was on his words and everything he _didn’t_ say, she did, in fact, notice other things. Things like the way he looked at her, the way he touched her, the way he was always, _always_ a little too close to be in any way, shape, or form, impersonal.

And, lately, she’s really come to notice that her focus for the past year or so has _always_ been tuned to him in general, no matter how idly. Ever since Laura Hale’s body was discovered, Peter Hale has been in the center of her attention. If one believed that the evolutionary adaptation to hunting theory provides a good way to look at ADHD in general, then she could probably apply that to this as well: Peter Hale somehow woke in her the need to hunt, and so she _is_ hunting, and nothing else will _ever_ matter but the hunt.

It is in the dark of the night, when her brain won’t shut off and she is pacing, relentless with the need to do _something_ , that she realizes that saying no was probably a very, very good thing. She is dangerous enough without adding ‘werewolf’ into that category.

It doesn’t stop her from thinking about it though, nor from dreaming.

Some nights she _wants_ so badly that she has her phone in her hands, staring at the display. Staring at Deucalion’s number, thumb lingering over speed-dial, heartbeat going machine-gun rapid. Some nights she lies there and considers telling the older man _everything_ , and asking for the bite.

She never does.

 

12.

She’s not sure when this _thing_ between Deucalion and her changes.

It might be the first time he takes her to a restaurant instead of their usual motel room. He bought her a truly pretty dress that (surprisingly) accentuated her lean frame in all the right ways, wined and dined her in a restaurant she’d never be able to afford on her own, and generally treated her more like she is an actual _girl_ than anyone ever had.

It might be the first time they don’t have sex, just lie there and _cuddle_ , for a lack of a better word. They are both exhausted from the two-front war that’s going on, and they both lack the energy necessary for sex. Still, she finds there’s a certain amount of comfort to be found in lying next to a man who knows your body almost as well as you do. There’s a certain amount of comfort to know that she can just relax: she won’t be woken up a three in the morning to do research for her alpha, and she won’t have to worry about enemy werewolves climbing through her window and doing horrible things to her.

It might be the first time they actually sit down and talk strategy, because they are both coming to realize that the Darach is a threat to both their packs, and that no one is going to win this ‘war’ between them until he or she is taken out of the picture. She comes to appreciate Deucalion’s quick wit and sly ways – this is a man who is used to working in the shadows, a man who understands the art of subtlety and misdirection, a man who understands that the normal people of Beacon Hill can’t know more about the supernatural than they already do. It is part of the reason the Alpha pack is even here – first Peter, and then Derek, have not kept things under wraps like they should have.

It might be the first time he asks for permission to call her by her real name. She’s honestly surprised by that. She hadn’t even been aware that he knew her real name. She thinks it’ll be good for a laugh, to listen to this put-together evil mastermind stumble over the name her own father can’t pronounce, but Deucalion doesn’t so much as hesitate. He simply smiles that strange half-smile of his and murmurs “Myśliwy,” at her like it is the easiest thing in the world. He never calls her ‘Stiles’ after that. She doesn’t ask him to.

It might be the first time her doorbell rings and there he is, standing on her porch, politely asking her permission to come in. It is the first time since she first found out about werewolves that one has ever bothered to use her front door – all the werewolves in her life tend to use her bedroom window, which has more than once had her contemplating switching her bedroom to the unused guest room down the hall, which is windowless. It is also the first time a werewolf just hasn’t walked in like they owned the place.

But honestly, she thinks that everything truly changed the moment she looked up at Deucalion and realized she didn’t have to pretend with him. She could be exactly as she is because he would never judge her, never condemn her. She is so used to hiding who she is that the concept of being free in this manner honestly terrifies her.

If Deucalion notices, he never says.

 

13.

Stiles waits for the night of a full moon before she begins. She had spent an entire month detoxing from her Adderall addiction, eating nothing but organic foods and meats to help remove all chemicals from her body that have no business being there. She eats regularly and often to help gain back some of the weight she’s lost since starting her research binge. She sleeps, not as regularly, not as often, but as much as her over-active mind allows. She could get more sleep with one of her Dad’s Ambien’s, but she hadn’t gone through the trouble of detoxing from one drug just to bounce onto another. The day of the full moon, she spends the entire day re-reading the ritual she’s found and cleansing her body with specially prepared herbal washes. She eats a light meal as she’s waiting for the moon to rise.

When it does, she casually strips and grabs the bundle by the door, walking out to her backyard to where she’s prepared her circle with no shame and no fear in her heart. She is steady, calm, focused. She is ready to let go of everything and try for something that feels true. What she’s doing will either work, or it won’t; she’ll either succeed or die, and either way, she won’t have to linger in this dull void of mere survival.

She wants to live, well and truly _live_ , and to do that, she is willing to go to any lengths.

 

14.

Her first murder is at the tender age of six.

Her father is a police officer in downtown L.A., and he’s very good at his job. He’s made more than a few enemies over the years, and one of them gets the bright idea to target the man’s family.

Her mother isn’t home when the man comes, having stepped out for only a second to get something at the general store down on the corner from their apartment. But Stiles is not helpless: she’s the only child of a police officer and a professional trainer – she’s been learning self-defense and gun control since she was old enough to understand the concept of ‘dangerous’. Her father is not fool enough to give her a gun of her own, or tell her the combination to the safe that contains his gun collection, but Stiles is a very smart girl.

Smart enough that she knows the combination by heart after only seeing her father use it in bits and pieces. The second she hears the front door slam open, she runs to her parents’ room and unlocks the safe.

Her first shot takes the man out at the knee. She watches him fall over, screaming and cursing. He reaches into his belt for his own gun, and she shoots him in the upper arm. She watches the arm spasm, muscle control going out the window; she watches his hand twitch before falling back down to the floor, away from the gun. He’s no threat to her now – her mother will be here any second now, and she will deal with the man until her father can be called. But Stiles can see in the way he’s glaring at her that it doesn’t matter that she’s just a small girl, that he had meant to hurt her to hurt her father, that he would have hurt her mother in equal measure.

She looks him dead in the eye and smiles when she shoots him in the head.

She spends the next ten minutes staring at the slowly growing puddle of blood, gun still in her hand. That’s how her mother finds her – still smiling, standing in a puddle of blood, staring at a corpse.

Her father puts in a transfer to Beacon Hills within the fortnight, and _never_ lets her touch a gun again.

 

15.

She’s barely stepped into her circle before she’s being dragged back out of it.

She knows the hand that grip belongs to; knows the voice that growl belongs to; knows that carmine gaze even if the expression within it is completely foreign.

Deucalion.

“What the hell?” She gasps out.

He drags her back into the house and throws her at the general direction of the couch.

She tumbles to the floor half-a-foot away, hitting the coffee table with her hip. She can’t stop the sharp whine that escapes her as the pain hits her. Anger quakes through her in almost the same breath. “What the _hell_?” she snaps out, staring up at Deucalion. And her anger drains away as fast as it comes. She’s suddenly aware that she is very naked, and very _vulnerable_. She’s _never_ felt like that before with him.

He looks _furious_. He looks like he’s three seconds away from ripping her apart.

“Deucalion?” she tries, cautiously. She’s never been in this position with him. Regardless of the mini-war between their packs, Deucalion’s never treated her with anything other than masculine interest and mild respect. He’s never growled at her, never laid a hand on her in anger, and he’s certainly never looked at her like he would cheerfully murder her.

“You would forsake _everything_ for him?” Deucalion spits at her.

And now she’s truly confused. “What?”

“ _Peter Hale_ ,” he hisses out, stalking towards her.

“What?” she asks again, because she is not just confused – she is goddamn fucking _bewildered_.

He gestures angrily back towards her backyard, where her circle is waiting. “Did you think I wouldn’t find out what you were doing, Myśliwy?” He kneels down in front of her, one hand reaching out and grabbing her by her left shoulder, and shakes her. “Well, forget it.” He shakes her again, harder this time. “You foolish girl. You’re _mine_.”

And… oh. _Oh_.

Well, now. Doesn’t _she_ feel stupid? Suddenly, quite a few things she’s been noticing about this thing between her Deucalion are starting to make entirely too much sense. Including the parts that she’s been blatantly ignoring because she is _human_ , and despite the fact that she runs with a wolf pack (sometimes), she doesn’t get all the nuances and subtleties to werewolf behavior, and Deucalion’s behavior is decidedly _not_. Human that is. Peter and Derek both have that problem, too. It must be a born-wolf thing, because none of the others who were bitten seem to have issues with verbalizing things and obeying personal-bubble rules.

He’s glaring at her still, fingers tightening. She’s going to have horrible bruises there tomorrow, provided she’s still alive.

“Why didn’t you _say_ something?” she asks him shakily. “Human, here. Remember? Not hardwired to understand werewolf-courtships.” And, oh _god_ , how is this even her life? She’s wondered – of _course_ she has – what it might be like to belong to Deucalion. He’s _not_ like Peter – _no_ _one’s_ like Peter – but he’s similar enough that she _wonders_.

He shakes her again. “I know you’re not stupid, Myśliwy. I was willing to let you _deliberately_ ignore this, because you are, as you say, _human_ , and still technically a child besides. I had _time_ to bring you slowly around, and your … _pack_ ” – the disdain in his voice reaches truly epic proportions – “was doing most of the hard work for me. I knew when I asked, you would not refuse.” His voice goes all deep and growling, like he’s a split second from shifting forms and tearing out her throat. “But I will _not_ be passed over for a mere _chance_ , Myśliwy.”

And that’s the real kicker, isn’t it? That she is willing to throw away _everything_ for the merest _chance_ to be Peter’s. And it _is_ a chance. A very _slight_ chance. Because she doesn’t even know _what_ would happen if she received the bite instead of Scott. She doesn’t know if she might earn Peter’s admiration again. He’d only offered after she proved herself – he’d tried to have Scott kill her beforehand, because she was the one keeping Scott from turning to Team!Peter.

And maybe she should have thought this through some more. Maybe she should have talked to someone about the whole Peter mess. She is just so _tired_ of hiding anymore, tired of being alone inside her head with no one to guide her, to help her focus. She’s tired of being the only one hunting.

She wants to tell him, wants Deucalion to understand that Peter has been the focus of her entire world for what seems like forever, that she’s both gained and lost something of herself that she will never get back because of him, that even a _chance_ is better than _nothing_. “I…” but she can’t force the words out of her mouth. She can’t make herself say those things to Deucalion, because like it or not, _aware_ of it or not, she has been allowing this man, this Alpha of Alphas, to court her.

And that’s when the realization really hits her.

 _Fuck_.

They were actually only a bite and a pup away from being _mated_. Like, forever and ever, _amen_ , kind of mated. And maybe she should have realized how serious this was getting. Maybe she should have realized the second that she had looked at Deucalion and realized she didn’t have to pretend anymore. The concept had scared her then, and it scared her now. She’s been hiding for _so_ _long_ , covering over her more … _interesting_ instincts for so long that the very _idea_ of not hiding….

She’s unexpectedly more than a bit aware that her _need_ to go back, to rewrite history, is born of this fear; that her desperation to risk everything for a mere _chance_ is some sort of coping mechanism for the subconscious knowledge that Deucalion was steadily but surely erasing _Peter_ from her life and placing himself in the center of her focus.

She shakes, staring at Deucalion. “I…” she tries again. She needs to say _something_ , she knows she does. She’s not sure if she wants to fix this, whatever this _is_ – if it’s even broken – or if she wants to sever _everything_. She’s so confused, so _lost_.

And Deucalion’s face softens, his grip gentling. “It’s alright, Myśliwy,” he murmurs as he pulls her to her feet and then picks her up. She curls instinctively into him, still feeling too vulnerable. She doesn’t like the feeling, but has the nagging suspicion she’ll be feeling that way for quite some time.

“You’re _mine_ ,” he half-says, half- _demands_ as he walks out her front door.

She’s still naked, and he’s made no moves to grab anything of hers from the house; but there’s a level of finality to the way her front door swings shut behind him. She breathes shakily and leans her head against his shoulder, nuzzling absently against him. _This_ may not be what she wanted, Deucalion may not be _who_ she wanted, but she would give this a chance.

A chance is better than nothing, after all.

**Author's Note:**

> For those who were curious, the name I chose for this version of girl!Stiles (Myśliwy) is Polish and means 'hunter'. I don't think it's meant to be a female's name, but I liked it. So. *shrugs*


End file.
